This class will track the passage of improvised music into, through, and out of the Western avant-garde. Through readings, listening sessions, workshops, and performances, participants will learn how improvisation has functioned as an approach to composing and playing music and, perhaps more importantly, as an appropriation of alien musical cultures in order to radically alter the structures of Western music and the expectations of listeners.
While considering the use of improvisation and new forms of composition that emerged in the early part of the twentieth century in Europe and America, the class will focus on the crucial period of the 1960s and 70s, when black artists—many of them experimenting with traditional forms of African music—developed free jazz, and predominantly white artists began integrating non-Western forms of structured improvisation—occasionally even becoming disciples of the masters of those forms—into classical and avant-garde compositions and performances. The class will go on to consider the eventual diffusion of these artists and the legacy of their work, especially in relation to contemporary experimental music, much of which eschews notation- and composition-based improvisation in favor of sound-based work. I imagine the class consisting of three to five reading and discussion sessions, perhaps bookended by actual improv workshops (no expertise necessary); these could be augmented by in-house performances or trips to shows at local venues.
Some questions to consider along the way: How did these diverse groups of artists use non-Western forms to question and even undermine the dominance of traditional jazz, academic classical music, and anodyne pop? What was the relationship between the racial divide that separated the artists who comprised those emergent movements and the work they made and the audiences they cultivated? How did the use of non-Western music cultures change the way we think about Western music, and the way we think about what exists outside of it? Why have these groups perennially excluded women? Despite formal similarities and political sympathies, why have there been so few musical exchanges between black artists working in the jazz tradition and white artists working in the Western classical tradition? How did they pit the values and concerns of their adopted musical cultures (purported to be mystical, apolitical, invested in timeless truths, etc.) against those of their native culture (cold war America)?
Potential artists to be considered: The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Anthony Braxton, John Cage, Pandit Pran Nath, Sonny Sharrock, La Monte Young, Alice Coltrane, Tony Conrad, The Velvet Underground, Steve Reich, Sun Ra, AMM, Henry Flynt, John Zorn, Derek Bailey, Aaron Dilloway, Sun City Girls, etc.
Potential readings:
George Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (he's at Columbia and could potentially teach a session)
Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (he's in New York and could potentially teach a session)
Brandon Joseph, Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage (also at Columbia, could also potentially teach a session)
John Zorn, Ed., Arcana: Musicians on Music (also in New York, could perhaps lead a workshop or host a performance)
Derek Bailey, Improvisation, Its Nature and Practice in Music
John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings
IMPOSSIBLE GEOMETRIES
A benefit party for the new home of Triple Canopy, Light Industry, and The Public School
177 Livingston Street, Brooklyn
Saturday, February 20, 2010
8 p.m. to the early a.m.
$5-$20, pay-as-you-wish suggested donation
The Public School New York is pleased to announce the opening of a base for its operations and venue for many of its classes at 177 Livingston Street, in downtown Brooklyn. The 5,000-square-foot storefront will be operated in partnership with Light Industry and Triple Canopy and will regularly host artist talks, screenings, workshops, lectures, classes, and performances. 177 Livingston will also host a library of books, magazines, artist publications, and film, video, and sound work, which will be open to the public starting in March. (Visit the 177 Livingston website for more details and a calendar of upcoming events.)
On February 20, The Public School, Light Industry, and Triple Canopy will throw a benefit party to celebrate the opening of 177 Livingston and help the organizations cover the costs of building out the space's interior, which was designed by Rachel Himmelfarb and Gabriel Fries-Briggs with support from Common Room.
The evening will begin at 8 p.m. with readings by Ed Park and Lynne Tillman. Next, there will be a rare stateside presentation of Lis Rhodes's Light Music (1975, pictured below). Rhodes's double projection is a seminal exploration of 16-mm optical sound—the on-screen abstraction is "read" by the projector as audio—and a classic of British expanded cinema. The "Anti-Matter Cabaret" of Ambergris and a set by the avant-pop ensemble Skeletons will follow, as will DJ sets by Josh Kline and Gary Murphy & Tim Lokiec. There will also be a table with information on The Public School, print-outs summarizing currently proposed classes, and a projection showing some documentation of past classes.
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Readings at 8, Film at 9, Music at 10
Ed Park is the author of the novel Personal Days and a founding editor of The Believer.
Lynne Tillman is the author of five novels, three collections of short stories, and three nonfiction books. Her most recent novel, American Genius: A Comedy, was published in 2006 by Soft Skull Press.
Lis Rhodes has been at the forefront of British experimental cinema since the early 1970s, working as part of the London Filmmakers' Co-op and later cofounding Circles, the first organization in the UK dedicated to distributing artist's film and video made by women. She lives and works in London and teaches at Slade School of Fine Art.
Ambergris is a band conducting spelunking tours into fluorescent lagoons of narrative imagination. Citing influences from Gilbert and Sullivan to Flipper, Ambergris has performed its "Anti-Matter Cabaret" in locations such as the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Issue Project Room in New York, and the Fumetto Festival in Lucern, Switzerland.
Skeletons is a New York-based avant-pop ensemble. The band's sixth full-length record, Money, was recently released on Tomlab.
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Light Industry is a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York. Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the project has evolved into a series of weekly events, each organized by a different artist, critic, or curator. Conceptually, Light Industry draws equal inspiration from the long history of alternative art spaces in New York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other intrepid film exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings, performances, and lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the presentation of time-based media. Bringing together the worlds of contemporary art, experimental cinema, new media, documentary film, and the academy (to name only a few), Light Industry looks to foster an ongoing dialogue among a wide range of artists and audiences within the city.
The Public School is a school with no curriculum. It has chapters in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Brussels, Paris, Puerto Rico, and other cities around the world. Via the Public School New York website and its discussion boards, members collaboratively generate ideas for free reading groups, skill-based workshops, seminar-style discussions, lecture-driven classes, and participatory projects. The Public School is not accredited, it does not give out degrees, and it has no affiliation with the public school system. It is a framework that supports autodidactic activities, operating under the assumption that everything is in everything. The Public School is a project of Telic Arts Exchange.
Triple Canopy works collectively with writers, artists, researchers and other collaborators on projects that deal critically with culture and politics, and the ways people engage them, both online and in the world at large. These investigations are realized in an online magazine as well as in public programs and print publications encompassing various fields and locales. We aim to present work and advance ideas informed by a multitude of disciplines and perspectives, and to disseminate them among a broad and diverse audience. Triple Canopy, a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization, was founded in late 2007; our first issue was published on March 17, 2008.
Common Room was established in 2006 as a space for collaboration with a focus on the built environment.